Chapter 7: It Is Not Written in the Heart of Man by Nature That God Should Promise Eternal Life upon Condition of Obedience

Sure, it is not repugnant to the yet innocent and entire nature of man, to know, that God may reward all such as seek and serve him, but that he must reward obedience either in the general, or so and so, is neither written in man's heart, nor has it any truth: For it were nothing against justice, or bounty, or any attribute of God, not to reward his creature, which is obliged to serve him, and though there be a sort of quietness of conscience, which is the natural result of obedience in Adam, and of all men, yet it cannot infer, that there is an intrinsical connection, ex naturâ rei, between our obedience and a reward to be given of God. Therefore, nor will it be a good inference, because there is disquietness in the conscience, after sin, and that it is natural to a sinner to apprehend a revenging power pursuing sin committed, that therefore it is natural and essential to the Lord, to pursue sin with punishment in general. For a natural conscience may, and does know, that God does freely create the world, and that he might not have created it, that he does good freely to his creatures, and that he is not a debtor to his creatures; Will it follow by any logic, that God creates the world by any natural obligation? And because by force of a natural conscience, all know that God is good and bountiful to his creatures, in giving and doing good to them, we cannot therefore infer that actual beneficence is so essential to the infinite Majesty, as he should not be God, if he did not extend that goodness to them. Common sense will say no more follows, but goodness and bounty intrinsical are essential to God, and these attributes are essential to him, and were from eternity in him, and are his good and bountiful nature; Though not either man, angel, or any thing else had been created, to which he does actually extend his goodness. Therefore, this actual extension of goodness is not essential to God, so neither is the actual punishing of sin essential to God, but free, though Adam apprehended God would punish his eating of the forbidden tree; Yet if he apprehended that he should not be God, if he did not punish it, his apprehension was erroneous. And this only follows that there is an intrinsical and internal justice in God, natural and essential in God, but so that the out-goings of his justice, the egressions are most free, and that is said by some without all reason, because the apprehensions we have naturally of God that he punishes sin, Universales apprehensiones, nequaquam sunt eorum quae Deo vel adesse vel abesse possunt pro liberrimâ voluntate. Universal apprehensions, therefore they are not apprehensions of such things as may be, or not be in God, according to his free pleasure, if the apprehensions of God's doing good to angels, to men, to all his creatures freely, be in all by nature, and cannot be rooted out, and be universal, then these apprehensions cannot be of such things as are in God, according to his most free will, and may be in the Almighty or not be in him.

But the conclusion has neither reason nor sense; for there are universal apprehensions in all men, and they cannot be rooted out, that God does good to angels, men, and creatures freely: Therefore; by this logic the doing of good freely to angels, men, and creatures is not a thing that is in God according to his free will, and may be in the Almighty or not in him. Then the so doing must be in God essentially. 2. Then must God not be God, if he does not good freely to them. 3. Then must God not be God, except he create men, angels, and creatures. 4. But since he is God everlasting, he must from everlasting have created men, angels, and the creatures, and from everlasting he must punish sin; Life may be considered. 1. As life. 2. As such an excellent life, to wit, a communion with God.

In the former consideration, life is either considered as the end, or secondly as a free reward. In the former respect, to live an intellectual life in obeying God, was to Adam so created a connatural end, as to burn, is to fire, and to give light, to the sun. And God may put the respect of a reward upon any obediential end. But that Adam should have such an eminent life, for the reward of his obedience as a communion with God, which is far above his obedience, is the free donation of God: nor is there any necessary connection between Adam's perfect obedience, and so high and eminent a life, nor can this Covenant, as touching such a promise, be written in his heart. God then never loved to make any Covenant, indeed even that of Works, without some acts and out-goings of grace, and the hire was grace, how is he not to be served, who loves to hire and allure us to be happy?

Arminius says, the reward of keeping the Covenant of Works, cannot be spiritual, nor can the punishment be spiritual, because you teach (says he) that the obedience is natural. Answer: It follows not, for the reward is spiritual, indeed and supernatural from the free promise of God: It was, that God should recompense our natural obedience, coming from connatural principles, with so eminent a crown as communion with God Creator, in a life of glory. And this came from no innate proportion between a natural work and supernatural reward; Otherwise we must say, first that there is such an intrinsical connection ex naturâ rei between Adam's work and so high wages, as that glorious communion was, as the Lord could not but in justice, so have rewarded his obedience, except he would be unjust, but there is nothing in the creature, that can conclude, limit, or determine, his will [illegible] wisdom, who is infinite. 2. It had been nothing against justice, if the Lord had followed Adam's obedience, with no reward at all; For man as a creature, owes himself to God, and as sweetly and pithily Anselm says, as a redeemed one I owe myself and more than myself to you, because you gave yourself who are so far more than myself, for me, and you promise yourself to me. Now God, who is more and greater than Adam, promised himself, to be enjoyed by Adam, if he should continue in obedience. For what can the highest goodness (says he) give to one that loves it, but itself?

3. If God, of justice, gives Adam life, Adam might compel God to pay what he owes him, else he should be unjust: but the creature can lay no necessity on the Creator, either to work without himself, nor can he cause him to will. 4. The proper work of merit (says great Bradwardine) and of him that works must go before the wages, in time, or in order of nature. And if the worker receives its operation, and working for wages from God first, and by his virtue and help continues in operation and working, he cannot condignly merit at the hand of God, but is rather more in God's debt, after his working, than before his working, because he bountifully receives more good from God than before, especially because he gives nothing proper of his own to God, but gives to God his own good. But no man first acts for God, for God is the first actor and mover in every action and motion. As that says, Who gave first to the Lord, and it shall be recompensed him?

5. If this was yesterday just, that life eternal is due to Adam for his work before God made it just and due, then from eternity and before any decree of God it was just and due. Certainly, God, upon the same reason, was a debtor to make such a covenant that was just, before he made it just. And this is no covenant of God, for God, not making the justice of the covenant, and the just connection between work and wages, he cannot be the Author of the covenant. But neither is Adam the author of the justice, nor of the just covenant. Upon the same ground, it was then an everlasting justice without and before God from eternity. Non datur justum prius primo justo.

6. If God did more for Adam than he can recompense God for it, as the Father has done to the Son, then he could not merit at the hand of God. But God did more to Adam in giving to him being, faculties, mind, will, affections, power, habits, his blessed image, than Adam can never be in a condition in which he can recompense God, or give him more annual interest, in his acting of obedience, than the stock he received in proportion. As the Son can never give the Father in recompense so much, or the captive ransomed from death can never give to his ransom payer, who bought him so much, as the one and the other shall no more be under an obligation and debt of love and service to father and ransomer than to a stranger that they never knew. Nor could Adam thus be freed of God, so as he should be owing nothing to him. If any say, God may freely forgive all this obligation and debt — to which Bradwardine answers well: 1. The forgiving of the debt, when the debtor has nothing to pay, is a greater debt taken on. 2. God (says he) may forgive so in regard of actual obligation, that he is not obliged ad aliquid faciendum sub poena peccati, to do anything under the pain or punishment of sin, as the hireling is obliged to work, when he has made a covenant to work, and so we are not obliged to do as much as we can for God. But in regard of habitual obligation, God cannot forgive the debt that the reasonable creature owes to God, for so he might dispense with this, that the reasonable creature owes no obedience to God, suppose he should command it, which is impossible.

They seem therefore, with eyes of flesh, to look upon God, who say that God by necessity of justice must punish sin — indeed, that the most High cannot be God, except he punish sin, and that he should not be God, if all his laws imposed upon men were only promissory and void of all threatenings.

What? could not God have said, eat not of the tree of knowledge, for if you eat not, your obedience shall be rewarded with life eternal, and no more? Might he not have laid aside all threatening? What Scripture or reason teaches to say, that God, if he creates a reasonable creature, and under a moral dependency, which it has and must have of God, then must God, by necessity of nature, punish the sinner — indeed, so as, if he punishes not, he should not be God, nor just, but must fall from his natural dominion, except he makes penal laws, and so he should not be God, except he says to Adam (if you eat you shall die) or (shall be punished for eating)? But this is not proven by one word, except this: the reasonable creature is not, nor cannot be subject to God Creator, except God punish the sinner. But that is denied: Adam should have had a moral dependence upon God, and God should have been God, and essentially just, if sin had never come into the world, and if God had kept Adam under a moral law, as he did the elect angels, who never felt or knew the fruit of a moral law broken and transgressed. And God, if he imposed any penal law upon the elect angels as penal (which shall be a hard work to prove) yet had a natural dominion over the elect angels, and suppose no law, but only a rewarding and remunerative law, had been over their heads, should God be no God in that case? And if any deny that God has a perfect dominion over the elect angels, he is not worthy to be refuted. 2. Show me, in all the Old or New Testament, any penal law of active obedience as penal, imposed upon the man Christ, or where is it written, If the Man Christ sin, he shall eternally die? I tremble at such expressions: is the Lord therefore not the Lord, and has the Lord fallen from his natural dominion over his Son, the Man Christ? Or (3) will any man deny, but the Lord might justly have laid upon all men and upon the elect angels a law only remunerative, not penal at all, a law only with the promise of a reward, and void of all threatening of death, first or second, or any other punishment, and yet he should have been the Lord, and had a natural dominion over angels, the Man Christ, and all mankind?

(3) Suppose the Lord had never imposed the penal Law forbidding the sin against the Holy Ghost, upon the Elect believers, nor any other penal Law, but by virtue of the most sufficient ransom of the Blood of God paid for man, he had made them now after the fall as the confirmed Angels, and holy as the Man Christ, and brought them so to glory, should he not have been God in that case, and should he have lost his natural dominion over men in that case? 4. The dominion of God over men is not only in one particular, of penal Laws, it is in remunerative Laws also, in giving predeterminating influences to obey and persevere in obedience, in not leading into temptation, in hiring and alluring us to serve God, in terrifying men with examples of the Lord's judgments on others — he spared not the Angels, etc. (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6) — and therefore, to say, that God falls from his natural dominion over man, and leaves off to be God, except he impose penal Laws upon men, is first an error in logic, à negatione speciei ad negationem generis, nulla est consequentia: If God have not a dominion over man, in one particular of penal Laws, he falls from his whole natural dominion, in other things: it is an undue inference. 2. It cannot be but too daring to tie the blessed Godhead, and his essential dominion over man, to only making of penal Laws: it smells of Scriptureless boldness with the Most High, and limits the Holy One, that he cannot be God, except he be God in our way: and says, he has no way to preserve his glory, but by creating a Hell: and therefore let that stand as an unproven position, since it has no probation; the reason that is given is as weak as the weak conclusion; though water may bear up water, yet it cannot support the earth. For 1. it says, if man be created a reasonable creature under a Law, he may sin, intercidi potuit obedientiâ, and he may be created under a Law, with perfect moral dependence upon God Creator, as the Elect Angels and the Man Christ, and yet never sin, and yet God falls not from his dominion, and leaves not off to be God. (2.) This looks somewhat the Arminian way, that man cannot be under the subjection of, properly so called, moral obedience, except his will be indifferent as Adam's was, to stand or fall, to run to Heaven or Hell, which indeed says, that the most perfect obedience of Christ, who was obedient to the death (Philippians 2:8), and delighted to do the will of God (Psalm 40:8; John 4:34), is no proper obedience, that is, perfect obedience is not proper obedience. And that obedience of Elect Angels the pattern of our obedience (Matthew 6:10; Isaiah 6:2-3; Psalm 103:20) is not proper obedience. 3. Whereas it is said, if man sin, his moral dependency cannot stand, except God punish him, but so not only God shall not be God, nor have dominion over man, except he impose a penal Law upon man, but he shall not be God except he actually punish man, or his surety Christ. But the same pen says that the outgoings of justice are free, that is to say, it is free to God to punish sin; and yet he falls from his natural dominion over man, and leaves off to be God, if he punish not sin. But we do deny that God falls from his natural dominion over man, though he never impose a penal Law upon him, and never punish, and desire that this may be proven, nor is it imaginable, how God by necessity of nature, must punish sin; and yet, in the way, measure, and degree of punishment, and in the time when, he can use moderation. Which is as good as to say, the fire must, by necessity of nature, burn, the Sun cast light; but the fire has free will to burn when it pleases, and at this time, and not at this time; and the Sun must shine, by necessity of nature, but it is free to shine at ten hours of the day, and not at twelve, and it may shine as bright as the Sun, or as dim as the Moon. Or God the Father loves himself, but it is free to him to love himself today, not tomorrow, and to love himself so much, not so much. And so he may say, God is so merciful and just today, as he may be no merciful, no just, tomorrow; and God is infinitely merciful and just, and yet he is less merciful and more merciful essentially according to his good pleasure, which are speaking contradictions. Indeed this is that which misjudging Suarez says, that the creature may do a real injury to God, and take away from God jus Dei ad gloriam, his right to glory, but the truth is, the creature by sin darkens or overclouds his declarative glory, but can take away no essential glory, nor any real right or real good from God, so Elihu (Job 39:6): If you sin, what do you do against him? If your transgressions be multiplied, what do you do to him? To take his declarative glory from God, is no loss to him, no more than it is loss to the Sun, that you hinder it to shine upon the wall, when yet you take no light from the Sun, for it shines upon an interposed body. (Job 35:8) Your wickedness may hurt a man as you are, and your righteousness may profit the Son of man. It is needful (say some) that God preserve his own glory safe, but if sin be without infliction of punishment, it is impossible that he can defend his [reconstructed: own] glory. Therefore, of necessity he must punish sin. The proposition is out of controversy, for all confess that God must preserve his own glory, [illegible] by necessity of nature he must do so; quoniam seipsum non potest non amare. Because he cannot but love himself, and he has said, my glory will I not give to another.

To this is answered, the glory internal, eternal, and essential to God, the Lord must defend and love as he loves himself, by necessity of nature; and if any say that the egressions and out-goings of God to defend and love his own essential glory, and his own holy nature, so as he may use moderation in the degrees and time of these, and he may love himself and his own essential glory, more or less, and touching the time, he may delay to love himself, and he may love himself and his own essential glory tomorrow, not today, as the author says, the out-goings of revenging justice are moderated in punishing; he speaks wonders and things unworthy of God. The place (Isaiah 42) speaks not of this glory, for no idol, no creature, can more take away from the Almighty this essential glory of God, nor his blessed nature can cease to be, but there is a glory declarative of pardoning mercy, as well, as of revenging justice; it must be a carnal conception and a new dream, that God by necessity of nature, loves himself as clothed with revenging justice, or as just, and his own glory of revenging justice, but that God loves himself as merciful and ready to forgive, or his own glory of pardoning mercy freely, and by no necessity of nature: which the author must say, for the place (Isaiah 45) should otherwise bear this sense, my glory of revenging justice only, I will not give to idol gods and creatures. But the place of (Isaiah 42:8) should not conclude, but they might ascribe the glory of salvation and merciful deliverances and victories over Judah, the Temple, the Sanctuary to their idol gods, the contrary whereof is intended by the Prophet; but if the Lord, by necessity of nature, love his declarative glory, as he loves himself, then he must love glory of one attribute, as well as of another, and so as his nature, not freedom or sovereignty puts him to it, to defend the glory of justice, when man sins; yes so as he cannot be God and essentially just, except he vindicate his glory of justice; yes so he must love the glory of saving and pardoning mercy, as himself, for the one glory is no less essential to God (if it be essential at all) than the other. And by this means, God, by necessity of nature, to preserve safe the glory of saving mercy, must send his Son, and by the like necessity, by which he loves himself, he must redeem man; now the Lord does not love himself, of free grace, for he every way, for the infinite excellency of his nature is love-worthy, and there is no intervening of freedom, or free grace, or sovereignty in the Lord's loving of himself and his own essential glory. There is a declarative glory, which is not essential to God, of which the Scripture speaks: (Proverbs 16:4) The Lord made all things for himself, that is, for his glory, to be declared. (Ephesians 1:6) He has chosen us to the praise of the glory of his grace. (Ephesians 1:11) In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, that we should be to the praise of his glory. (Romans 11:36) All things are to him, to his glory. (Isaiah 43:21) This people have I formed for myself, they shall show forth my praise. All these are to be understood not of the essential glory of God, but of the declarative glory of God, that shines outwardly. And this glory is not essential to God as so declared, for he was infinitely glorious from eternity, and should eternally be essentially glorious, though neither world, nor man, nor angel, had been created. And the meaning of that (Isaiah 42:8) is mistaken, the length of the heaven, toto Coelo. It is not this, as I love myself, so by necessity of nature I will, and desire that my glory due to me, as God, be not given to idol gods, and creatures. First, what by necessity of nature God wills, that certainly, and by necessity of nature is and exists, as he loves himself, and his Son by necessity of nature, and begets his Son by necessity of nature, so also by necessity of nature God is loved, and the Son of God is loved, and the Son is by necessity of nature, begotten of the Father. But it is most untrue, that by necessity of nature, the glory of God is not transferred to idol gods and creatures; the Scriptures cry the contrary. Whenever idolatry is committed (Isaiah 40; Isaiah 41; Isaiah 46; Romans 1; Acts 17), his declarative glory is given, most sinfully to another against his approving will. Second, whatever sin God forbids, he forbids the existence of it, by his approving will, not by necessity of nature, for if God essentially and by nature willed that sin and idolatry should never be, he would efficaciously hinder it; but what God wills by his commanding will, we see he does not efficaciously hinder the existence thereof: for then sin and idolatry should not be at all, nor have any existence, which is contrary to Scripture and experience. And surely, if God love his declarative glory essentially as himself, he must essentially no less love to keep this glory, when angels and men do obey him, and to hinder the taking away of this glory by sin, than to revenge the taking away of this glory by punishment, for every sin against a positive law, to eat of the tree of knowledge, or for the Jews to eat swine's flesh, before Christ abolished such laws, as well as sins against the law of nature, are contrary to the glory of God, and so contrary to that essential love that God has to his glory, and to the glory of the Lord, the lawgiver himself. Therefore, by necessity of nature, because he cannot but love himself, he should preserve his legislative glory (it is as properly and essentially the glory of God, which he requires of us, in doing his will, as the glory of suffering punishment for sin committed, is his glory); therefore, by necessity of nature, because God cannot but love himself, he should essentially hinder sin: and if God absolve the guilty, where is the glory of his justice? True, it should be lost, so when God suffers the angels to fall, and Adam to sin, where is the glory of his legislative majesty? It is lost so far. God is obliged to defend the glory of his justice: say and prove that he is obliged by necessity of nature to defend the glory of his justice, more than by the same necessity he must defend his legislative glory. Third, God must defend all his glory with the same necessity, except the Scripture make some exception of some glory which he must preserve, as dearer to him than some other glory, which is unwarrantable to say, and if God must, by necessity of nature, and as God, because naturally he loves himself and his own glory, defend his own glory, then, by necessity of nature he must defend the glory of all his attributes, of holiness, graciousness, greatness, omnipotency, eternity, infinite knowledge, etc. that the glory of not one of these be taken from him by sin. And because the Lord makes, and works all, that he does without himself, in the creature, for his own glory (Proverbs 16:4; Revelation 4:11; Romans 11:36), in all that he does, he must by necessity of nature love his own glory, quoniam seipsum non potest non amare, because he loves himself. Therefore, by this ground the Lord does nothing freely without himself, and so the Lord makes not the rain to fall, the tree to bud, the sea to ebb, the wind to blow, the fowls to fly, the fishes to swim, for the declaration of the glory of his goodness, or his power, or his mercy, his holiness, with any freedom, but all these he must do for glory to himself by necessity of nature, which glory he loves as himself, for his glory in all he does without, he loves by necessity of nature, as he loves himself, says the author. And therefore as he cannot preserve the glory of his justice, but by punishing sin, and that by necessity of nature, so he cannot preserve the glory of the rest of all his attributes (which glory also he loves as himself) but by doing all without himself in like manner by necessity of nature, which utterly destroys the liberty and freedom of God in all his works of providence and creation, and so God shall be a natural agent in all his works without himself, not a free agent in creating and redeeming. Fourth, the Scripture says, he works all things according to the counsel of his will, for his glory, and therefore he intends not his own declarative glory as he loves himself: for by necessity of nature he loves himself, and cannot but love himself. But he might, if so it had pleased him, never have intended to show forth his own glory, and does not show it forth by necessity of nature as he loves himself. Indeed he might never have created the world, never have acted without himself: for he was sufficient within himself and stood in need of no declarative glory (Genesis 17:1; Acts 17:25). Fifth, indeed if by necessity of justice, God cannot but punish sin, especially this justice shall carry him to follow the law of works without any gospel moderation, which is that the same person that sins, and the same soul (Ezekiel 18) and no other, should die for sin: for all these. "You shall destroy all the workers of iniquity." "You are of purer eyes than that you can behold iniquity" — and the like, are expressions of a pure legal proceeding in the Lord, against such as are out of Christ, under the law, not under the gospel, to wit, the workers of iniquity whom the Lord in justice shall punish in their person, not in their surety. And if there be such a connection objective ex naturâ rei, between sin and punishment, it must be between punishment and the very person and none other, but the same that sinned: for among men this is justice. Noxa sequitur caput, so that by necessity of nature, God shall not be God, nor essentially just, if he punish not eternally Adam and all mankind in their own persons, and so by necessity of justice, he cannot punish Christ; and it cannot be denied but there is a dispensation of free grace, and that it is no act of justice but of grace, that God make Christ sin, that is, a sacrifice for sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21). And that the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all (Isaiah 53:6), and made him our surety. Nor let any man object, how could God make Christ a propitiation for sin to declare his righteousness? Or how could such justice, by that action be preserved; since justice did not exact such an action: if without violation of justice it might have been omitted, if God should have been infinitely just from eternity, if he had done no such thing? Shall a prince get himself glory in the name of justice, by doing that which, by his absolute sovereignty, he may leave undone without hurt of justice? It is answered, this is to measure God by mortal men: shall an earthly father freely for no real good to himself beget hundreds of children, when he needs not, and yet he foresees the largest number of them shall perish eternally, and the eldest must die and be made a curse, to save the rest. The Lord punished Christ for us to declare the glory of his justice in punishing sin in his own Son, who was the sinner by imputation, for out of the depth of infinite wisdom, the Lord freely imposes a law upon his creatures: he might have imposed no such law under such a punishment. By no necessity of nature did the Lord threaten death, for the eating the fruit of that tree, prove, that God should not have been God, except he had threatened death for the eating of that fruit, and except he had punished that eating with death, either to be inflicted upon the eater or his surety. Quid haeres? Prove that by the Word of God, it is sin to eat, when God forbids; but the Lord's soul hates sin. True, but does the Lord's soul hate sin naturally, as he loves himself and by necessity of his essential justice as contradistinguished from his immutability, and his truth and faithfulness, according to which attributes, he decreed and said, that the soul that sins shall die, and (he that eats shall die) and he cannot change, nor alter, what he has decreed, and cannot but be true in his threatenings. But the question is, whether (laying aside the respect of God's unchangeableness and truth) there be such a connection internal, between eating and dying, or between eating forbidden of God, and punishment, as God cannot be equally and essentially just, nor can he be God, except he punish forbidden eating; for sure eating of that fruit, is not of its nature, sin, but it is sin, from the only forbidding will of God, for the Lord had been no less essentially just, had he commanded Adam to eat of the tree of knowledge. Therefore, it is punished from the forbidding will of God, for say that to be punishable or to be punished be essential to sin, if eating of such fruit be sin from the forbidding will of God, the essence thereof must be from the same forbidding will, then must it follow that God hates not all sin, by necessity of nature; and that he hates such eating only conditionally, if he forbid it; but [illegible] from his mere free will, did forbid it. So the question shall not be, whether God in justice, punished Christ, and made him a propitiation to declare his justice, but what the relative justice outwardly is, by which God punishes sin, and whether God should leave off to be God (hallowed be his high name) if he should not make first penal laws to threaten all sin with punishment. Second, whether he should not be God, if he should not punish all sin, even the eating of the forbidden tree. Third, what can be said that is more weak and watery, to enervate the glory of free grace, than to confound the glory of God's justice in giving Christ to die for sinners, and this glory as manifested and declared: for sure the manifestation of that glory is a work of free grace, and most free, if God do anything freely, he must freely, and by no necessity of justice, mercy, omnipotency, patience, grace, etc. manifest the glory of all these to men and angels, and these attributes and the internal splendor, beauty, or (to speak so) the fundamental glory of all the attributes of God is essential to God, and his very nature. And they deny the Lord, who teach that any attributes or such glory are in God freely or contingently (if I dare so speak) for then might we say, these may go and come, ebb and flow in the Lord, and he should be God, though mercy, omnipotency, gloriousness, graciousness, were now and then wanting in him, as he punishes not always, and yet he is eternally just, he saves not always, and yet he is eternally mighty to save, and abundant in compassions. But as to the manifestation of power, mercy, justice, that is freely in God: he sent his Son, and gave his Son to death for us, out of love (John 3:16). But it is against common sense, to infer, therefore God sent his Son, by necessity of love, and mercy, and free grace, so that he should not have been infinitely loving, merciful, gracious, if he had never sent him. And it is as poor logic to say, because of grace and free love he sent his Son, and so might not have sent him, as to say he loved where there was no need, and it is in vain to show the glory of justice (says the author) when God can take away sin, out of free pleasure, and why should he expose his Son to shame, death, and a curse, whereas he might have taken away sin freely, because it is his pleasure? This is the very thing that Socinians say, there is no need of blood, and satisfaction by blood, if God out of his absolute sovereignty can take sin away without blood, and so there was no need of real satisfaction; this is against the Holy Ghost, and we may hear it. All the Scriptures cry that out of free grace the Lord sent his Son, and delivered him to death; by the grace of God he tasted death for every man (Hebrews 2:9). Shall we infer there was then no necessity that he should die? It is safest to say the only wise God decreed that sin should be. Second, that the glory of his justice should appear in taking away sin, not in our way, but in the way of God, to wit, in a way of justice, of mercy, of free grace, in incomparable love, of mighty power; and in all these so acts the Lord as he should not leave off to be the Lord, but acts most freely, though he had not taken that course. But far be it from the godly not to adore him in this, as the admirable way beyond the thoughts of men and angels.

It were safest to draw holy practices by way of use from this.

In all pacts between the Lord and man, even in a [reconstructed: Law-Covenant] there is some out-breaking of grace. It's true, there was no Gospel-grace, that is a fruit of Christ's merit in this Covenant. But yet if grace be taken for undeserved goodness: There are these respects of grace. 1. That God might have given to Adam something inferior to the glorious image of God, that consists in true righteousness, knowledge of God, and holiness (Genesis 1:26; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10). It was a rich enough stock, this holy image to be so badly guided. And who looks spiritually to their receipts? It's either too much of grace and holiness that another has, and too little that I have, so arises virtual sighing and grudging at the dispensation. Or 2. a swelling that it is so much, as if it were not receiving. I am holier than you (Isaiah 65:5), a not-knowing of him that makes me to differ (1 Corinthians 4:7), a blackening of others (Luke 18:11), a secret quarreling at God as too strict and hard in his reckoning (Matthew 25:24). And what pride is this, because I am a mere patient under gifted holiness, to usurp it as my own? As if a horse should kick and fling, because he wears a borrowed saddle of silk for a day.

2. Being and dominion over the creatures is of undeserved goodness. Who looks to a borrowed body and a borrowed soul, indeed and to self, and to that which is called I, as to a thing that is freely gifted? So that though you be in a high opinion of self, self is self, and what it is, from God. And when you ride, from where is it that I am the rider, and the wearied horse the carrier, but from God? 3. The Covenant of Works itself, that God out of sovereignty does not command, is undeserved condescending; that God bargains for hire, do this and live, whereas he may bide a sovereign law-giver and charge and command us, is overcoming goodness. Law is honeyed with love, and hire; it is mercy that for our penny of obedience, so rich a wage as communion with God is given. 4. The influences to acts of obedience, come under a twofold consideration. 1. As congruous and suitable concurrences of God to Adam's acts of obedience: And so they were free gifts to Adam not promised, as we shall hear in the New Covenant. 2. As such influences by which the standing elect angels (who were under this Covenant as well as Adam) were distinguished from the angels that fell, and were confirmed that they should not fall, in this latter respect. Absolute sovereignty shines in Adam's fall, so if a sparrow cannot stir its wing without God (Matthew 10:29), nor a hair fall from our head (verse 30), far less could Adam fall, and all his, without a singular providence; and far less could Adam go on and act without influences from God. And if strong Adam and upright, created in holiness, could not then stand alone; shall our clay legs now under the fall bear us up? What godly trembling is required in us? 5. The gift of prophecy (Genesis 2:23) seems to be freely given, besides the image of God, and Adam's knowledge (Genesis 2:19) of every living creature, according to their nature may be proven, but it appears to be natural, and he is a lamentable example to us of abusing the image of God, and good gifts; but no habit without the continued actings of God can keep us in a course of obedience: There is no ground to make habits of grace our confidence. 3. There can be no giving and taking between the creature and the Creator. Elihu pleads well for him (Job 35:7): If you be righteous what do you give to him? Or what does he receive of your hand (verse 1)? Your wickedness may hurt a man, as you are, and your righteousness may profit the son of man (Job 22:2). Can a man be profitable to God, as he that is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it pleasure to the Almighty that you are righteous? Or is it a gain to him that you make your ways perfect? So Eliphaz. And David (Psalm 16:2): My goodness extends not to you. (Acts 17:25) Neither is the Lord worshipped with men's hands, nor with their spirits: as if he needed anything, seeing he gives to all life and breath and all things. What then is the glory of the creature's obedience to him? It is some shining of the excellency of God upon men and angels, from the works of God, and our obedience to him. But suppose there were no creature to pay the rent of this glory to him, is the Lord a loser therefore? Has he need of our songs of glory? Or that creatures should be heralds of his praise? Or needs he the workmanship or structure of heaven, sun and moon to be a printed book to spell and sound his glory? If he needs not the book (as he needs nothing created — who says I am the Lord All-sufficient) he needs not one letter, nor any sense of the contents of the chapters of that book. There is a secret carnal notion of God in us, when we act and suffer for God, that brings a false peace, and some calms of mind, we have pleased him once, and beside that peace, a scum and a froth smokes up imperceptibly in the heart, we are profitable to God, it would be the worse with him, if he lacked our prayers and service: but had the Lord any missing of heaven and of angels and men, in these infinite and innumerable ages of duration, that went before any created being? When he was upon these infinite and self-delighting thoughts, solacing himself in that infinite substantial fairness and love his Son Christ (Proverbs 8:[reconstructed: 30]). (2.) You can give nothing to God Creator of all, but it must be either an uncreated Godhead, but he who perfectly possesses himself, will not thank you for that, or your gift must be a created thing: But how wide is his universal dominion? Can you give to one that, of which he was absolute Lord before? All the roses are his, all the vineyards, all the mountains, he is the owner of the south and the north, of the east and the west, and infinite millions of possible worlds, beyond what angels and all angels can number, for eternity of ages, are in the bosom of his vast Omnipotence; He can create them if he will.

And what you give to another, it was out of his dominion, but all things are in his dominion, for who spoiled him of what he had? David blessed the Lord, when the people gave for the Temple, excusing himself and the people, that they took on them to give to the great Lord-giver: (1 Chronicles 29:11) Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty, for all that is in the heaven and in the earth is yours, yours is the Kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Verse 12: Both riches and honor come of you, and you reign, and in your hand it is to make great, and to give strength to all. 14. But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able, so willingly, to offer after this sort? For all things come of you, and of your own have we given you. Hence, none can give to [reconstructed: God]. 1. Because he is JEHOVAH the Eternal God, then he gives all and nothing can be given to him. 2. Because of the greatness and infiniteness of God. Giving is an adding to him, to whom we give. But nothing can be added to him, for yours is the greatness, the power, and the majesty. 3. Nothing can be given to him who is universal and full Lord and Possessor of heaven and earth, and all things therein, for all that is in the heaven, etc., are yours. 4. Nothing can be given to him, who is so Lord, that he is exalted as Head, Prince and King, above all created Kings, and their dominions over their own. 5. But all the goods of the Subjects are the Princes, or the Commonwealths. The Jurists distinguish as the Schoolman Theod. Smising, Tom. 1. de Deo, tractat. 3. disp. 4. q. 5. fig. 65, a two-fold jus, jus altum and jus bassum: The Prince and Commonwealth have a sort of eminent right to the goods of the Subjects, to dispose of them for the public good, as they may demolish a castle belonging to a private man in the frontiers of the enemies' land, because it hurts the country, and may be better made use of by enemies against them for the country; and they may compel him to sell it, but this hinders not, but every Subject has a dominion and right to his own goods, to use them at his pleasure, which the Prince cannot do. Ahab the King has no right nor dominion over the vineyard of Naboth to compel him to sell it or give it against his will to his Prince; for the earthly Prince, or rather the man himself, the just Proprietor before men cannot bear that, so as it may be said of God, verse 12, both riches and honor come of you, and you reign over all: for God created the being of gold and of everything, that we can give to God, which no earthly Prince can do.

6. Nothing can be given to him, in whose hand is power and might, and to make great and to give strength: For 1. Riches and things we give are of him. 2. Power, might and strength to give, either Physical, to bear a burden to his house: Or, 2. Moral, a willing mind and heart to give is in his hand: Or, 3. A mixed power, the being of the act of giving is his. (Verse 7) Of your own we give you. Can we give to any that which is his own already? Can you give to a Crowned King over such a Kingdom his own Crown? Can you give to the righteous owner of his own lands, his own Garden, and his own vineyard, in gift? But every being created is the Lord's.

8. Says David, (verse 15) We are strangers before you, and sojourners as all our fathers were: and that says, the Lord is the only Heritor, and we but Tenants at will, and strangers both fathers and sons, though for five hundred or a thousand years fathers and sons have lineally and in heritage before men possessed such lands: yet before you (says he) we and our fathers have but Tenant-right, and are strangers from you. And what can a mere stranger to life and being give to the just Heritor and Lord of life and being?

9. And our days (says David) on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding life, and being is a shadow of being, and God is the only first excellent being: and suppose we should give life and being to and for him, it is but a borrowed shadow that we give him; and we are not lords of our own being, we have not absolute right over ourselves to give ourselves to him. If Doeg will not give himself to God, and act for God, (Psalm 51:2) God shall take you away and pluck you out of your dwelling place, and root you out of the land of the living. (Job 27:21) The east wind of God carries him away, and as a storm hurls him out of his place. You shall bestow life and being worse than upon God. God shall make mortar of you, O fool! who makes a god of borrowed I, great I and poor Nothing-self. Indeed, if there be a pronoun in you, O let it be this: Oh if my separation from Christ and the blotting of my name out of the Book of Life, and my heaven might be a footstool to heighten the glory, the high glory of the Lord in the salvation of many. 2. This pronoun self and mine is a proud usurper against God. Was he not an atheist or a churl, and his name folly, who said, (1 Samuel 25:11) and breathed out so many my's? Shall I take my bread and my waters, and my flesh which I killed for my hearers, and give it to men whom I know not from where they be? And he was as mad a fool who thus speaks, (Isaiah 10:13) By the strength of my hand have I done it, and by my wisdom, for I am prudent: and I removed the bounds of the people — 14. And my hand has found as a nest the riches of the people, and as one gathers eggs that are left, so have I gathered all the earth, and there was none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or peeped. This [illegible] the fool-axe boasting against him that hews with it. And another fool said: Make an agreement with me by a present, and come out to me, (Isaiah 36:16). And this mad-nothing is above God, (Isaiah 37:10) Let not your God in whom you trust deceive you. The tyrant of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of the river said, My river is my own, and I have made it for myself, (Ezekiel 29:3). God made the sea and all the rivers. There be three pronouns in the mouth of another proud monarch, (Daniel 4:30) And the king spoke and said, Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power and the honor of my majesty? So soon as there falls from the great Lord of being a chip or shadow of created being, especially where being is rational and under a law, there follows and results (the Lord withdrawing) a proud supposed I and a vain conceit of self, and a dream of godhead comes in with borrowed being; and therefore created sinless self is to be denied. Adam denied not himself and thought in his sick imagination he should be like God knowing good and evil, (Genesis 3). Christ the more excellent Adam pleased not that noble self, (Romans 15:3) [illegible]. He denied himself as man, as a gracious mere man, to be God or more than a man. And this self-denial is in elect angels, who blush and are sinlessly ashamed of self, and cover their faces with wings before shining infiniteness of glory, and proclaim him three times holy, holy, holy, (Isaiah 6:2-3). And who does not know we own grace as our own? My prayers, my faith, my holiness, my tears, as if grace had a relish from self, not from God: but Paul, (1 Corinthians 15:10) Not I, but the grace of God (not my grace in me) that was with me, [illegible].

4. But is there no pact between God and the creature? Surely we must say that the covenant between God and Adam is of another nature, indeed and promises also, than these that are between man and man; for there is proper giving and taking between the creature. 2. The proper covenants between man and man require that both parties be free and independent one of another, there may intervene a jus, a right and a debt upon the promisor to him to whom the promise is made. Omne promissum ex ore fideli cadit in debitum. Jurists say there is no proper binding covenants between the father and the son, the lord and the servant; for the son and the servant are not lords of themselves nor sui juris. The father by no pact can remove the foundation of the debt of nature that the son owes to the father: for it is impossible, but if such a man be son to such a man, but he owes to his father as to an instrument, quod sit and vivat, being and living, and the son cannot satisfy by paying the father for that sum, and the father cannot cancel the bond nor give him an acquittance. Far less can any recompense the Lord for life and being. The fallen angels and the damned in hell and all wicked men are in the Lord's account book everlasting debtors to him for being. But God who is more than a Father (to whom men are but painted fathers) may thus far loosen the bond, as he may command the son to sacrifice the father, as well as once he commanded the father Abraham to offer up his son to God. But God cannot resign his right that he has over the creature to a creature, because he cannot leave off to be Creator, and so cannot lay aside or make over Creator-right, jus Creatoris, to any. 2. Say that a creature had a jus or right over the Creator, it is either an uncreated right or a created right, so to pursue God by law, as to cause him do him justice; it cannot be an uncreated right; for that were near to blasphemy: for no created head can bear the royal crown of the King of Ages. If it be a created right, this created right must be under the dominion of him who is universal Lord of all: then may the Lord make use of it at his pleasure; then may not the man make use of it at his pleasure: for an absolute dominion of one and the same thing cannot be in the hands of two absolute lords, who may have contradictory desires concerning the same thing: such as the holy Lord and sinful men often are. Let us correct the bold pleadings and the daring charges that our vain hearts put upon the Lord: Why do you strive against him (says Elihu, Job 33:13) for he gives not account of any of his matters? Men dare say, when they are under the vengeance of ordinary sufferings, "The ways of the Lord are not equal" (Ezekiel 33:10). "If our transgressions and our sins be upon us, and we pine away in them, how shall we then live?" But upon whom should sins and transgressions and the punishment thereof be, if not upon the carcasses of the authors? Will you raise letters to summon him? Where is the judge? Where is the tribunal? But he promised so and so; but this is not the question of strict justice: that says something against the veracity and faithfulness of God, but nothing against the justice. But neither does a promise as a promise raise a plea of injustice against the holy and glorious Lord, suppose he should not fulfill his promise. For 1. A pact by promise creates no equality of justice between thing and thing, between wage and work: otherwise he that is called to the Vineyard, and labors from the third hour, has a just plea: for he should have more wages than a penny, which he gets who labors but one hour. But the Lord makes not the equality or proportion between much laboring for many hours, and the quantity and degree of the wage his rule. But the Lord pleads the free covenant for his standing rule (Matthew 20:13). "Friend, I do you no wrong: did you not agree with me for a penny?" And verse 15: "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with my own?" Hence read our sickly [reconstructed: querulous] nature. 1. Naturally we argue from much working, and would conclude God, much running, long sweating, and pains in keeping the covenant of works should bind God, except he be unjust, to give me as many ounces and pound weights of glory everlasting, as I have fasted moments, and told over prayers upon beads, and uttered sighs: therefore have we fasted and you do not see? We work and keep the covenant of works, but God pays us not our wage. Though it be a doubt to me, if the covenant of works had stood, and Adam and all his had fulfilled it perfectly; if the Lord should weigh in an even balance, by ounce weights, our poor labor, and great reward of glory, for had he entered such a market, the loss had been ours; we could not have obtained life eternal that way, for our stock of time-working should have dried up. The virtue of justice stands in the equality of that which is given and received. Now there is a twofold equality, one rei ad rem between thing and thing, an arithmetic justice, so many ounces of natural actings, and the same number of ounces of grace and glory: this commutative justice is not in God, as the soundest and most learned schoolmen teach. There is another justice of proportion duarum rerum ad duas alias res, of two things proportionally answering to two things, distributive justice is this, and it keeps a geometrical proportion. Augustine with Scripture says, God is become our debtor not by receiving anything from us, but by promising what he pleases.

2. It follows from the Parable, that God's bargaining with us depends not upon the equality between thing and thing, the work and the wage; but upon his own free pleasure of disposing of his own: And it is the frowardness of our nature to judge the penny of Glory, that we get by laboring to be our own, whereas after the promise, and after we have fulfilled the condition, it is not ours, but God's, and he calls it his own, and it is to be disposed on by the Lord's free grace. Friend, may not I do with mine own, what I please? (Matthew 20:15). 2. No promise as a promise can give us a proper right, by way of strict justice, to plead with God. 1. A promise of grace is a free promise, and no man can say, because God promises the new heart to most undeserving men, that are of a stony heart, and do profane his holy name, among the Gentiles, that therefore it is just by condignity of the thing, that a new heart should be given to them, that are foolish, disobedient, and serving diverse lusts. The farthest that hard-faced Jesuits go in this, is to tell us of the poor penny of the merit of congruity, for the right weight of the sum and thousands of saving grace which Papists have refused as ashamed thereof.

3. If a promise as a promise should make an equality between one thing and another, and so lay a bond of strict commutative justice upon God, then should every promise do the like, [reconstructed: what belongs to all belongs to each], but that cannot be said: For then if God should promise glory of ten thousand millions of degrees above the glory that Angels and men now enjoy, for speaking one good word, that should be a free promise, but that promise should not make an equality between so huge and rich a reward of glory, and so hungry and poor a work as the speaking of a good word, so as God should fail of justice, if he should deny a reward so great, for so small a work: For the denying thereof should be against the veracity and faithfulness of God, if he should not fulfill his promise, but he should not fail against strict justice either in not rewarding the work with a condign reward, or in not giving to the man that spoke the good word his own. For there is no just equality between work and wage here. Nor can ever so feckless a work, or all the works of men and Angels, make the glory of life everlasting our own. For glory remains ever the proper gift of God, and under his dominion.

4. A promise is, by order of time or nature, later and posterior to the good thing promised, as words of truth are later to things, and things have the same value and worth, before and after the promise, indeed if one promises to give for a plot of ground, a sum of money of value, five hundred times above the worth of that plot of ground, that promise cannot make the unequal and unjust price to be a just and equal price. Even so the promise of God to give eternal life to the obedience of Adam can make no equality of strict justice between the reward and the wage; For the reward promised for the wages is equal and just before the promise, and ex naturâ rei; and so must lay bonds on the Lord, so as he cannot do contrary to it, which is against all reason.

And who gave first to the Lord, and it shall be recompensed to him, and he that gave first to him, man or Angel, must give his own (or then it is no giving) which he received not from God, either created being, or gift, or work (for any uncreated gift none can give to him) as is said. 2. What is given is among the all things that are of him, as the efficient, and to him, as the last end, and through him, as the conserver of all, and so can be no gift to him (Romans 11:36).

And what God of free goodness decrees to do, that he may decree not to do; and things falling under his decree, are not necessary, he cannot decree that man should be a reasonable creature, for it involves a contradiction to be a man, and not to be a reasonable creature. But no shadow of contradiction there is for the Lord to forbid to eat; and to forbid to eat under a punishment: And the not created world (it being from eternity nothing and a non ens) could not have any jus or right to plead that God would stand to what he decreed, and give being and create a world, for if the Lord should not give being to it, and create what he had decreed from eternity to create, he should fail against his own unchangeable Nature, but should do no injustice to an uncreated world, except we say God should be unjust, if he had not created the world, for being of justice is due to the world, and God refuses to pay the debt of being to the uncreated world, which is nonsense. And upon the same ground, if he should annihilate the world or take away life from living things, he should be unjust; It is safer therefore to say that God owes the creature nothing, but we are his debtors, for service and praises, while we have any being.

4. Use. If God, of his free will, so placed Adam to reward his obedience: We think hard to serve God for wages, and to be placed in a condition of obedience. Eve, and we with her, sucking the same milk, thirst after such lawless independence to be from (Genesis 3:5-6) under God; Whereas Adam and Angel-courtiers that have wings to obey, and the Noble and High Heir who learned obedience through the things he suffered were in this condition, and Christ a King in the shape of a Servant was obedient to death, to the death of the Cross (Philippians 2). Hence, to weary of submitting to God, speaks much unnatural pride, indeed will not be under God. 2. There is little of Christ in such, for it was life to Christ and meat and drink (Psalm 40:8; Hebrews 10:8; John 4:34; Acts 10:38) to obey, and it is the Angels' life (Isaiah 6:2-3; Psalm 103:20; Revelation 4:8) and they are near him, who both at once serve and Reign (Revelation 22:3, 5). Much delight to obey, speaks much of God in the heart. Tire not of your Master; examine more, untowardness to pray, to confer, to give, etc. if it be not a cause of deadness and be not a way of backsliding.

5. Use. If creatures keep their covenant-natural with God, shall not the ox, the crane (Isaiah 1:3; Jeremiah 8:7), the ass (2 Peter 2:16), who never had a design of rebellion, testify against us in judgment? Ah! what an unnatural policy, the first evil wit of him that sinned from the beginning (John 8:44), and whom we follow at the heels, it is to please our own wit, in covenant breaking. Such as are sick of love for their own wily time-serving custom — if all natural men in their death bed damn not this folly, ask them and they shall speak.

6. Use. If God covenants with us for hire, when his absoluteness may bear him to command, how sinfully soft are our spirits, and weak is reason, that is broken with a straw, when an apple conquers Eve's eye and heart? Talents of silver, and a wedge of gold — Achan, and Gehazi; a drink of water, if not at hand, in time of thirst, make the people murmur against God; the more sanctified, refined and spiritual reason be, the farther it is above that which crushes Balaam and Judas. The first heaven's motion, the primum mobile, which draws all the rest, must be the most excellent, and the moving power must be most spiritual; it's neither heaviness which is in stones or clay, nor lightness in the air and fire, but a more heavenly force, which throws about that body, so the motions of sanctified reason which is swayed and driven by no argument, but from eternity, communion with God, a kingdom above time, must be most spiritual. The dog is moved with a bone, the ox with hay.

7. If no law and poor obedience of ours can buy a communion with God, let us examine the peace that flows from obedience. It's purer and more solid peace, that flows from justification, and more immediately removes the war between God and us (Romans 5:1), and comes by a purer and nearer emanation from God and from the ransom of redemption that is in Christ, than that which flows from created acts of inherent holiness. (2.) Our first Adam's element is justification by works, in which we love to live and die. The law is a home-born idol in us: our apprehensions of our own actings are lively and vigorous, the 3000 (Acts 2:37), Saul (Acts 9:6), and the jailer (Acts 16:30), ask what we shall do? [illegible] But it is not the law word of working (Romans 4:2, 4, 5, 6; Romans 3:20, 28). It's much to be dead to the law, and to law-righteousness (Galatians 2:19-20): I live not, but Christ lives in me. Christ (2.) is a stranger to us, and comes from without, gifted righteousness comes from heaven. Grace only makes us willing debtors to grace. The pride of self will neither beg nor borrow from, nor be debtor to a crucified Savior, when it despises him until the roof of the house falls. 3. Seldom do these two concur, deadness to works of grace, and lively activity in the doing of them. Paul attained to both (but every man is not Paul) (1 Corinthians 15:9-10): I labored more abundantly than they all. But fearing and trembling at that (I) [illegible], he strikes sail to Christ, yet not I, but the grace of God in me. This pride Paul notes in the Jews, they stooped not, nor bowed (as inferiors to their master, king, or lord, or father and husband, so the word) to the righteousness of God. When (I) (self) or nature meets with working, indeed with grace often, there follows some loftiness, except it be humbled and mortified (I) which can weep and say: Lord, what am I?